Answer:
This depends entirely on who is doing the considering. If it’s Jane, the all-important protagonist with whom we are supposed to identify, then she is Rochester’s equal and was from the start, and this is acknowledged between them many times throughout the novel. When Rochester proposes the first time, Jane declares herself independent from him: “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me!” She says if she had been gifted with wealth and beauty (the trappings that would have made society consider them social equals), she would have made it just “as hard for [him] to leave [her]” and says that she is speaking to him as one soul to another, equal before God, and Rochester agrees with her, basically acknowledging that they are equals in his sight, even if the rest of the world doesn’t agree. He describes Jane as his “second-self” and speaks to her as an equal in almost all of their conversations. The only ways he suggests his superiority to her is in experience and years, and only once is it implied that he is teasing her about their financial inequality.
Still, what makes their relationship uncomfortable (besides the wife in the attic) is the fact that one of them is financially dependent on the other, even though Jane insists that “nothing freeborn” would submit to unjust treatment just for money. (Rochester wryly insinuates that there are a lot of things that “freeborn” people choose to do for money, and Jane is being a bit idealistic in her outlook.) What is apparent from his treatment of her, however (and the lengths he goes to to get her to confess her love to him and not the other way around), is that he is acutely aware of the tension of their unequal relationship and the fact that, if he proposed to her, she might feel pressured to accept because she is his social inferior, or at the least that it does make things awkward.
